Books about Treachery from Amazon.com

Isabella arrived in London in 1308, the spirited twelve-year-old daughter of King Philip IV of France. Her marriage to the heir to England’s throne was designed to heal old political wounds between the two countries, and in the years that followed, she would become an important figure, a determined and clever woman whose influence would come to last centuries. But Queen Isabella’s political machinations led generations of historians to malign her, earning her a reputation as a ruthless schemer and an odious nickname, “the She-Wolf of France.”

Now the acclaimed author of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Alison Weir, reexamines the life of Isabella of England, history’s other notorious and charismatic medieval queen. Praised for her fair looks, the newly wed Isabella was denied the attentions of Edward II, a weak, sexually ambiguous monarch with scant taste for his royal duties. As their marriage progressed, Isabella was neglected by her dissolute husband and slighted by his favored male courtiers. Humiliated and deprived of her income, her children, and her liberty, Isabella escaped to France, where she entered into a passionate affair with Edward II’s mortal enemy, Roger Mortimer. Together, Isabella and Mortimer led the only successful invasion of English soil since the Norman Conquest of 1066, deposing Edward and ruling in his stead as co-regents for Isabella’s young son, Edward III. Fate, however, was soon to catch up with Isabella and her lover.

Many mysteries and legends have been woven around Isabella’s story. She was long condemned as an accessory to Edward II’s brutal murder in 1327, but recent research has cast doubt on whether that murder even took place.

Isabella’s reputation, then, rests largely on the prejudices of monkish chroniclers and prudish Victorian scholars. Here Alison Weir gives a startling, groundbreaking new perspective on Isabella, in this first full biography in more than 150 years. In a work of extraordinary original research, Weir effectively strips away centuries of propaganda, legend, and romantic myth, and reveals a truly remarkable woman who had a profound influence upon the age in which she lived and the history of western Europe.

Engaging, vibrant, alive with breathtaking detail and unforgettable characters, Queen Isabella is biographical history at its finest.


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Integral to most crime tales is the unearthing of concealed and unfavorable facts about suspected malefactors. But the mother-son duo who write under the nom de plume "Charles Todd" are particularly adept, in their historical novels featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, at exploiting painful secrets as tools in developing both character and plot. It's rare, in a Todd tale, that even the innocent should escape unscathed. The authors demonstrate their skills once more in A Cold Treachery, which sends the shell-shocked and lonely Rutledge to probe the winter massacre of a sheep-farming family in northern England, at the same time as he searches for the missing and only witness to that chilling savagery.

"It was beyond comprehension," we're told of the December 1919 violence, near the rustic Lake District town of Urskdale, that left Gerald and Grace Elcott and three of their progeny shot to death. A fourth child, 10-year-old Josh Robinson, is nowhere to be found. He's thought to have fled from the scene, only to have perished in a recent blizzard. Coming off the grim proceedings recalled in A Fearsome Doubt, Rutledge--shackled as always to the nattering ghost of Hamish MacLeod, a Scotsman he'd ordered executed on a World War I battlefield--must determine whether the murderer was a passing stranger, or a local who'd previously concealed his or her aptitude for barbarity--and might kill again. Gerald Elcott's less-successful brother, Paul, has ample motive (he's next in line to inherit their clan's farm), as does Grace's sister, Janet Ashton, who just happens to arrive in Urskdale with a gun in hand (supposedly to protect her sibling from Paul's anger). Yet there's another, more frightening possibility--that Josh, Gerald's stepson, upset by the breakup of his parents, committed these atrocities. Desperate for clues, and with his impatient superior threatening to replace him on this case, Rutledge still can't claim to know who, or what, was behind the carnage.

After their disappointing standalone, The Murder Stone, it's a relief to see the Todd pair return to the "gloomy, defeated and exhausted" postwar England of Ian Rutledge, where no end of dire dramas appear to lurk. Like its half-dozen predecessors, stretching back to A Test of Wills, A Cold Treachery satisfies with its copious period details, characters traumatized by fate and failures, and a bedeviled young protagonist who must solve other people's problems before his own. And even as Hamish seems here to slip further into the background, there's finally the prospect of Rutledge finding companionship of a more corporeal sort. --J. Kingston Pierce.
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“Liberals’ loyalty to the United States is off-limits as a subject of political debate. Why is the relative patriotism of the two parties the only issue that is out of bounds for rational discussion?”

In a stunning follow-up to her number one bestseller Slander, leading conservative pundit Ann Coulter contends that liberals have been wrong on every foreign policy issue, from the fight against Communism at home and abroad, the Nixon and the Clinton presidencies, and the struggle with the Soviet empire right up to today’s war on terrorism. “Liberals have a preternatural gift for always striking a position on the side of treason,” says Coulter. “Everyone says liberals love America, too. No, they don’t.” From Truman to Kennedy to Carter to Clinton, America has contained, appeased, and retreated, often sacrificing America’s best interests and security. With the fate of the world in the balance, liberals should leave the defense of the nation to conservatives.

Reexamining the sixty-year history of the Cold War and beyond—including the career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Whittaker Chambers–Alger Hiss affair, Ronald Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” the Gulf War, and our present war on terrorism—Coulter reveals how liberals have been horribly wrong in all their political analyses and policy prescriptions. McCarthy, exonerated by the Venona Papers if not before, was basically right about Soviet agents working for the U.S. government. Hiss turned out to be a high-ranking Soviet spy (who consulted Roosevelt at Yalta). Reagan, ridiculed throughout his presidency, ended up winning the Cold War. And George W. Bush, also an object of ridicule, has performed exceptionally in responding to America’s newest threats at home and abroad.

Coulter, who in Slander exposed a liberal bias in today’s media, also examines how history, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, has been written by liberals and, therefore, distorted by their perspective. Far from being irrelevant today, her clearheaded and piercing view of what we’ve been through informs us perfectly for challenges today and in the future.

With Slander, Ann Coulter became the most recognized and talked-about conservative intellectual of the year. Treason, in many ways an even more controversial and prescient book, will ignite impassioned political debate at one of the most crucial moments in our history.


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Is there anyone cooler than Boba Fett? Like a cross between Clint Eastwood and Chow Yun Fat--but with a jetpack and kneepad rocket dart launchers--Fett has always symbolized cool, quiet power. If Fett wants you, you're as good as got (that ridiculous incident over the Great Pit of Carkoon in Return of the Jedi notwithstanding).

So any book or comic featuring his royal Fettness had better be good. Fortunately, our boy gets his due in this quality Dark Horse collection of three previously published comics (Bounty on Bar-Kooda, When the Fat Lady Swings, and Murder Most Foul). The story, by John Wagner of Judge Dredd fame, is by no means brilliant, but it's clever enough to rise a cut above the more schlocky Star Wars spinoff fare. What really sets this collection apart, though, are the moody colors and expert composition of Cam Kennedy (Star Wars: Dark Empire). From our favorite bounty hunter nonchalantly capping some thug without even turning around to breezing through the defenses of a H'unn's criminal stronghold, Death, Lies, and Treachery is classic Fett. --Paul Hughes.
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Traps & Treachery is the definitive d20 System resource for traps, tricks, puzzles, and poisons. Traps & Treachery contains more than 60 complete descriptions of magic and mechanical traps, all beautifully illustrated, detailed guidelines on trap design and classification, comprehensive rules for creating and using poisons, new prestige classes, new skills, new feats, new equipment, new magic items, the Thievery clerical domain, and more..
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My friend George is competing in a grueling three-day mountain-bike race

in Costa Rica, and her cousin Bess and I will be there as her support team.

But when I find out someone's taking dangerous steps to make sure top U.S.

cyclist Derek Woodhall doesn't win, I realize George may not be the only

rider I need to help.

Could last year's winner be the culprit? He was freaking out when Derek

took an early lead. Or maybe Derek's publicist? She seems a little too

psyched about the press her client's misfortune is generating.

I've got a lot on my plate, and not much time to sort it all out. But I

know how to keep my eye on the prize. Whoever the culprit is, they picked

the wrong race to sabotage!

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